The incorporation of electronic devices with tire structures has been shown to yield many practical advantages. Tire electronics may provide their own power source whose operation depends on tire related phenomena and may also include sensors and other components for obtaining information regarding various physical parameters of a tire, such as temperature, pressure, number of tire revolutions, tire rotation speed, etc. Such information may be useful in tire monitoring and warning systems, and may even be employed with feedback systems to monitor proper tire pressure levels.
United States Published Patent Application 2003/0209063 (Adamson et al.) is directed to a system and method for generating electric power from a rotating tire's mechanical energy using piezoelectric fiber composites.
United States Published Patent Application 2003/0056351 (Wilkie et al.) is directed to a piezoelectric micro-fiber composite actuator and a method for making the same.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,093,997 (Zimnicki et al.) is directed to a piezoelectric resonator embedded within an electrically insulating substrate assembly, such as a multilayer printed circuit board.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,747,916 (Sugimoto et al.) is directed to a piezoelectric transformer unit which transforms an input voltage into an output voltage and which includes a piezoelectric transformer element driven by high electric power.
The disclosures of all of the foregoing United States patent and published patent applications are hereby fully incorporated into this application for all purposes by reference thereto. While various implementations of piezoelectric generators have been developed, and while various combinations of tire characteristic monitoring devices have been implemented, no design has emerged that generally encompasses all of the desired characteristics as hereafter presented in accordance with the subject technology.